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I think the biggest problem with these patents is, that they are often very vague and cover things that anybody will come up with sooner or later. So they don't really help, by "inventing" something and offering it to everybody to enhance their work, they are simply used to sue everybody who has the idea later on, most likely was not aware of the patent. "You use flour to bake bread? Well, bad luck for you, I have a patent for that!..." -.-

I don't like software patents. They suck big time.
Software development is iterative. Everyone builds on other people's ideas.
When someone patents a step in this process it is utterly unfair. They are demanding payment of others for their small step, but they are not paying for all the thousands of small steps that have gone before.
This is why the current Android/Apple patent wars are so stupid.
Apple seem to forget that their whole user interface ethos was "borrowed" from Xerox Parc without any payment.

As to Zynga, of course they copy stuff. Everyone else does, they are just a bit more blatant. Games are derivative and where Zynga borrow they generally make a better job of what it is that they have borrowed.
And how about all the many hundreds of game publishers who have copied elements of their products and their business model from Zynga? In fact for iOS games you would be mad not to.

@Bruce: In fact, Xerox made something like $150 million when Apple went public after they were given shares in exchange for showing off their labs work. IIRC, Xerox had a three or five-button mouse on their system, that cost something like $200 - Apple made a one-button $20 version, which is exactly how innovation works, as you say.

However, Zynga - particularly with the Tiny Tower copy - are getting pretty close to pure counterfeiting.

Though I don't support copy/paste work like what we saw with the Tiny Tower clone, this is taking it too far. Vague patent troll, would be my first thought. Something tells me that this will go through the Texan court.
Edit: if I had bothered to read the wole thing etc etc

It looks very much like PMC are a company that simply collects and monetises patents, without actually using them to create products or develop further technologies. While I would dearly love to see this kind of company disappear, there do seem to be a great number of them out there. Without reforming the patent system I don't think we'll see the end of these patent trolls any time soon, at least not while it's possible to make so much money for doing so little.

These suits (and patents) are simply ridiculous in most cases. What makes things worse is that many of the people working at patent offices, well-intentioned though they may be, simply don't have the technical background to realize that some of these applications are ridiculous.

The US Patent office is broken. Patents were originally supposed to be for a specific implementation, resulting in a product. But they approve patents that are ideas, and half-baked ideas at that (look at their game patents). Part of the problem, now, is that they're self-funding, so the more patents they approve, the more $$$ they make.

I see some of their patents have a priority date of 1981 but are active until 2027/2028 since they were granted in 2010/2011. Wow. And there are 40 more still in the pipeline. That makes a bit of a mockery of the changes made to get rid of submarine patents, and will make the internet's usual call for "prior art" to be more troublesome.